MTV Uncensored

by MTV

Drawing on thousands of hours of interviews and performances, an irreverent, behind-the-scenes look at music television shares dozens of anecdotes about performers ranging from Madonna and Ben Stiller to Eminem and Jennifer Lopez, as well as inside information on MTV's top 100 videos, entertaining secrets about off-screen shenanigans, and other choice gossip.

Genres: Nonfiction, Music

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be quite fair, this book gets 4 stars for photots (awesome) and 1.5 for writing-- sometimes with fonts so small that this 39 year old had to take her glasses off and squint to read it. Having read a couple of memoir/interview style books from the original 1980s VJs over the years, there wasn't a ton of "new" content in this book, and a lot of the "stories" told about the rock and roll/music industry lifestyle in the 1980s and 1990s in particular, are kind of painful to read as a feminist, and even as a fan of bands like Nirvana or Green Day, but it's a coffee table book! And the photos are so fun and cover 25+ years of live musical performances from multiple genres, and are why I even bothered to read anything written on the pages anyway. If you're a nostalgic music fan/ used to swoon over Adam Curry's hair/ can still easily hear Kurt Loder's voice in your head when you try, you'll probably enjoy this one, but if you're looking for anything other than a really cool scrapbook style nostalgia book, you'll be disappointed. Enjoyed the photos and the memories. 3 stars.

[Petty Lisbon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't realize this was gonna be a coffee table book. The pictures were nice but they should've include captions or explanations for some pictures and make sure that each picture matched the topic of the page. The writing needed editing, too. Sometimes the people interviewed had interesting stories that would be cut for something unnecessary like all of Colin Quinn's gross antics. I liked reading about their ideology for having the dance show be about music you can dance to instead of just dance music. I enjoyed reading about House of Style and the brief moment of fashion being treated with importance. At the very least, this book should've been in chronological order.

[Shant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't realize that this was 1) an official book or 2) a coffee table book when I added it to my shelf, so I was pretty surprised to read it and not be reading an expose on MTV written by jaded academics. But I'm so glad that it wasn't the book I imagined it would be.

I haven't read I want my MTV (Update: I just learned that this book preceded that one by a decade) so I don't know how redundant this gets if you've read that one.

They captured the magic of MTV pretty well- primarily, the way they had themed programming blocks for lots of different demographics and the way they took their young demographic seriously. I appreciated how most of the employees weren't too blinded by nostalgia or too cynical.

The way this book is sequenced, though, is a nightmare. The only theme is that there are next to no consistencies for how the book is organized (Until the MTV unplugged part, at least).

[Elizabeth Lund]

Fun. I may finally understand what "rock and roll" means--just purposelessly irreverent. Made me look up more about a lot of incidents/artists

[Madi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very cool ! A lot of interesting information and PearlJam ☺️